At a New York Jobs With Justice MOVE (Mobilizing and Organizing Voices for Equality) meeting in New York City we were fortunate to come upon the spoken word of Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, the self-described "heartbeat-soul-sister-warrior-artist-duo" that makes up Climbing Poetree. These sisters not only excel as spoken word artists - they also do public art murals, tattooing, have their own clothing line, produce books and journals, and find time to dedicate themselves to doing art education with young people. After finishing a five month tour across the country with their multimedia performance "Uniting the State of the Americas" Naima and Alixa sat down to talk with us about their tour, what it means to be an artist and how they are spreading resistance through art.
JM: Climbing Poetree just finished a five-month whirlwind tour across the U.S. What were you all doing, what were you focusing on?
NP: It had a very specific mission. We put together this multimedia performance that fused spoken word poetry with slide projections and choreographed movements and it was all to raise consciousness about the drug war and to show the two faces of the drug war - one that manifests domestically and the other one that's happening abroad in South America. Like with my background with prison activism and that kind of a thing I was talking about domestic policy and how the drug war is responsible for rising incarceration rates. And also the connection between what's happening in our communities as a result of the drug war and what's happening behind the walls.
AG: I was talking about the issues happening in Colombia - Putamayo in southern Colombia - where the US is funding this $1.3 billion war on the land and the people that live there to eradicate the Coca and the Poppy seeds. By doing so they are poisoning the people, the water source, the land itself. The people are being displaced not only by the fumigation but because Colombia has such an intense civil war background there's constant turmoil in the land. People are being displaced by the violence. The fumigations are bringing in more tension between the paramilitary and the guerilla. So it was really bringing in that side of the war on drugs. It’s ridiculous how we can fund the second most expensive military project next to Israel and nobody knows about it in the US.
JM: Where did the idea for the tour come from?
AG: We were pissed off [laughs]. I came back from South America and I was really going crazy cuz I had seen people who had been fumigated. I was teaching people about Plan Colombia in Colombia and working with indigenous leaders in Ecuador. It was like really seeing it firsthand and knowing that their voices meant nothing to the peoples up here; they weren't being heard. I was like, "I'm up there – my voice is a privilege." All of our voices up here in the United States, whether you're legal or illegal, a resident, a citizen whatever, you have so much power just because you are here. And I really wanted to use that and like Naima was saying, art is such an incredible tool as far as people feeling empowered instead of defensive when you are presenting ugly things that for me it just seemed logical to take that step so when Naima said she was about it I was like "holla."
NP: It just came out perfectly where we intersected. The point when Alixa came back from South America I was working in a women's prison teaching poetry and I was going crazy in my own head about what were we building with these women. You let so much stuff out just through the process of writing and finally getting a chance to voice all the stuff that's built up inside of you. And hearing so much of the same stories, the same cycle of violence. From being a young child and being beaten and abused to just going through being beaten again by the system, turning to drugs trying to heal from something...and ending up locked up. And just this constant cycle - I don't know, my sisters on the inside are with me all the time and I was feeling a crazy sense of urgency in terms of needing to talk about what was going on. And I intersected with Alixa at the same point and realized that wait a minute the drug war is responsible for so much of this, let's get up and go, play connect the dots from city to city, go on a mission and just try to use our art, our talent to let those voices be heard.
JM: What kind of audience were you speaking to, who was receiving this?
NP: Everybody. A lot of people. We were really intentional about talking to as many diverse peoples as possible and not just having one target group. We would be preaching to the choir and to anyone and everyone in between.
AG: Punk rockers, hip hoppers...
NP: Yeah we'd do stuff for a hand full of old rich white folks in an art gallery and then we'd do something in the ghetto at a youth opportunity center in the inner city. And we would do stuff at halfway houses, public parks, clubs, poetry venues, fried chicken joints in Memphis.
JM: What were people's reactions? How did people take this? Were they surprised, was it new information, was it stuff they felt like they already knew, did they see the connections you were trying to make?
NP: It was differing. We got an overwhelmingly positive response. We were really blown away. We thought that we'd have to be more on the defensive cuz we're not preaching the status quo by any means. But it seemed like either people were like "yo thank you for echoing what's in my head all the time and for amplifying what I believe to be true" or "thank you for waking me up to this; this is so relevant." But people were really making space for the information which was cool. And one of the ways I thought it was most powerful was actually for the artists themselves in terms of "thanks for reminding me what a powerful tool my art can be...I need to make sure that I'm really using my talent for the betterment of humanity, to tell my own story and to use it daily for a voice and not just decorate the world."
AG: As far as people seeing the parallels, we were surprised. You make something and you hope that people see it. You see it in your head but you don't know if it's actually going to mirror that. And everybody was just like "yeah, you presented it in a way that it really paralleled those two things...how did you think of that?" It was good that it wasn't just what we know here but also what's happening down there. There are a lot of people that just do South American studies but won't address the issues here. So a lot of groups, especially in schools were like, ah shh we should combine both studies and try to work together instead of working separately against these two enemies which are the same thing. So it was good to see that in a couple places where people were going to make actions to connect people doing Latin America studies or doing studies of incarceration or inner city studies here.
JM: You have projects that deal with Plan Colombia and the prison system, what
else does your artwork touch upon?
AG: Personally a lot of women’s issues and stuff, social issues. As far as poetry, independent forms, just everything. There's so much to tackle but its hard to get all scatterbrained because then you're so diluted. Like you can have 10,000 missions but then all of it is half-assed. I think it’s important to target one thing or you just burn out mad quick. Another passion is homeless work which I did for 3 years....that's another thing that I really love to do but its one thing at a time.
NP: Like I've really been trying to concentrate on the Prison Industrial Complex because that's just so huge in and of itself. Which is not my style, usually I'm all over the board and I try to talk about environmental racism, war, anti-capitalism and everything. Because it's all interrelated you can talk about so much. I can talk about being a queer woman of color and tie it to the presidential elections and diamonds and AIDS in Africa...its all part of the same web.
JM: You were talking about reawakening in artists the idea of using their art to reach people. What motivates you all to do that? What's the purpose of the art that you're doing?
AG: I think art is meaningful, if its not then it's pointless, you know? There's no need to decorate the world anymore, it's already decorated enough. It should be the purpose, or else why do it.
NP: I think art is really one of our strongest tools. Creativity is the antidote for destruction and for violence really and each of us has the power within us to manifest something creatively. I think there's a lot of power in art, to educate and tell our own stories and counteract all the b.s. that we hear in the mainstream media all the time. That's our form. It’s a beautiful thing because it reaches on a deeper level, like a more visceral, sensory level that touches our humanity so it’s not so heady, up here. It's a universal language that anybody can understand. I feel like this tour really proved that because we talked to all kinds of people... I think that's important – to cross generational lines, geographic lines, race lines, class lines and be able to communicate our own stories to counteract the lies and use it as a force for change.
The artists can be reached at artforachange@yahoo.com.
Jessica Marshall is one of the National
Coordinators of the YCL.
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